A new study has shown that the Amazon rainforest may be nearing a critical tipping point that could see the biologically rich and diverse ecosystem transformed into a grassy savannah.
Previous studies based on computer simulations had reached similar conclusions about an ecological point of no return for the Amazon rainforest — but the authors said their research, published in Nature Climate Change on Monday, used real-world observations.
Apart from storing a huge amount of carbon and strongly influencing global weather patterns, the rainforest is known to be home to a unique array of animal and plant life.
However, scientists say that about three-quarters of the rainforest is showing signs of “resilience loss” — a reduced ability to recover from disturbances like droughts, logging and fires.
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The latest study is based on month-to-month observations of satellite data from the past 20 years that has mapped the biomass (the area’s organic material ) and the greenness of the forest to show how it has changed in response to fluctuating weather conditions.
According to the study, the decreasing resilience since the early 2000s is a warning sign of irreversible decline, the authors said. While it isn’t possible to tell exactly when the transition from rainforest to savannah might happen, once it was obvious, it would be too late to stop.
One of the authors of a new study and a director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, Timothy M. Lenton, said “It’s worth reminding ourselves that if it gets to that tipping point and we commit to losing the Amazon rainforest, then we get a significant feedback to global climate change”.S
Speaking further, he said, “We lose about 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide mostly in the trees but also the soil (of the Amazon)”. “If the Amazon is no longer a rainforest, it won’t store as much carbon”.
The authors of the study said the rainforest could disappear fairly quickly, once we reach the tipping point.
“My hunch, for what it’s worth, (is that) it could happen in the space of decades,” Lenton said.
Story was adapted from CNN.
